


But He's MY Best Friend!

by blackgoliath



Series: Did Someone Say Playground AU [5]
Category: Marvel (Comics)
Genre: F/M, M/M, just some hints of shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 04:12:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackgoliath/pseuds/blackgoliath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Playground AU: in which Sam befriends the new girl and Steve is jealous</p>
            </blockquote>





	But He's MY Best Friend!

Steve and Sam are inseparable. They are easily the most recognizable pair of all the third graders, the two boys who spend the most time together, one never seen without the other whether it’s in class, on the playground, or even in the bathroom (there are occasions, though, where one or the other visits the boy’s room without his buddy, and these are rare moments indeed). They’re BFFs, best friends forever, no exceptions and no excuses. They even have a secret handshake, though it changes depending on the week, just to keep things interesting.

So when the day comes that Sam sits with the new girl Steve isn’t sure what to do.

At first when Sam doesn’t stand with him in line Steve assumes his friend is in the bathroom or getting out late from his math class with Mrs. Hill (the only class the two of them don’t have together). He sits at their usual table, and the rest of their friends - Tony, Rhodey, Carol, Monica, Jess, even Bruce on the days he isn’t eating with the biology teacher - join him one by one, but still there’s no Sam. The empty spot on the bench next to Steve feels lonely. He eats his mac and cheese and tells himself that Sam is probably in the bathroom or something.

And then when his best friend does appear, Steve’s automatically smiling. There was no reason to worry, he’s just being silly, that’s all — those are his thoughts until he notices that a blonde girl ( _Sharon Carter_ , he remembers from homeroom that morning) has come out after Sam and they’re talking and walking to a completely different table. A table where Steve is not sitting.

He frowns over a spoonful of mac and cheese. 

_But if he sits with her_ , he thinks, somewhat bitterly, as he shoves the noodles into his mouth, _he can’t sit with me!_

“Hey, Steve-o,” Carol says. She’s sitting across from him, her homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich held tightly in her hands. “What’s with the long face?”

Steve takes another bite of his lunch, making his expression carefully neutral. “I think there was a hair in my mac and cheese.”

“Ew, gross! I thought the lunch ladies wore hair nets so that wouldn’t happen!”

Steve shrugs. “It was probably an accident. I got it out, it’s okay now.”

During lunch Steve keeps waiting for Sam to walk over, to at least visit, but it doesn’t happen. Every glance in Sam’s direction gives Steve a pretty good view of how well they’re getting along; both are smiling and talking a lot and they’re the only ones at the table, the two of them taking up a whole bench each, and Steve bitterly remembers when it was him and Sam who would take up a whole table just so they could hang out and talk to only each other without Tony’s rambles about the robot he built or Bruce talking about biology or Carol and Jess only talking to each other and ignoring everyone else.

When lunch is over and everyone is herded outside for recess Steve pushes through the crowd, searching for Sam, and finally catches up to him and his new best friend at the big pine tree just outside the door to the playground.

“Hey, Steve!” Sam say excitedly when Steve grabs his arm, as though he’s been waiting for Steve to appear the whole time and not, instead, quietly betraying Steve by sitting with someone else. “This is Sharon. She’s new.”

“I know. She's in our class, remember?”

“Yeah.” When Steve glances over at this intruder on his friendship with Sam he sees a shy smile, cheeks slightly pink and blue eyes looking up at him through long dark lashes. That is the precise moment that he realizes it will be very, very hard to ever stay angry at Sharon Carter.

“Hi,” Steve says, without any of the venom he’s been meaning to use. “I’m Steve.”

“Sharon.” 

They shake hands under a wide smile from Sam.

“See, I _told_ you, Sharon. You and Steve’ll get along great!”

“Yeah, thanks,” Sharon murmurs. She almost seems embarrassed at what Sam has said and Steve is left wondering why.

The awkward tension is broken when Sam grabs both of their hands and starts pulling them away from the tree, toward the rest of the playground.

“Come on you guys, the swings are free! We should get over there before someone else takes them.”

As Sam drags them across the playground Steve glances over at Sharon just in time to see that she’s looking at him too. He feels a familiar _thump_ in his chest, something he doesn’t usually experience unless Sam’s around, and decides that anyone Sam could take such a liking to so quickly can’t be very bad at all.

The three of them take the available swings, Steve in the middle with Sharon and Sam on either side, and talking becomes irrelevant in their mutual pursuit for the highest air possible. Steve and Sam have these competitions often, both seeing who can swing the highest and jump off without wincing at the pain of blood-filled feet hitting hard ground, and this time it’s Sharon who wins; Sam and Steve jump off at mediocre levels of height but Sharon, still swinging after they’ve both jumped, waits until the highest point of her ascent before pushing free of the swing. She’s almost flying, she’s so high, and when she finally lands she does a neat somersault and pops up several feet away with her hands in the air and a triumphant grin on her face.

“Wow,” Sam and Steve breathe simultaneously.

Though no one, Steve thinks constantly during the next few weeks, will ever replace Sam, Sharon quickly gains favor from both of them. And it’s not much longer after that that the inseparable twosome so long recognized by the school is replaced with an inseparable threesome.


End file.
